Iscar operates in other nations and always has a “fallback
position,” including inventories, Wertheimer said in an
interview for broadcast today on Bloomberg Television.

“We operate around the world, we have thousands and
thousands of people everywhere,” Wertheimer said yesterday in
Caesarea, about 62 miles (100 kilometers) south of Iscar’s
headquarters in Tefen in northern Israel. “We’ve been used to
it ever since we were here.”

Iscar, founded in 1952 by his father Stef Wertheimer, makes
cutting gear for industries including aerospace and auto
manufacturing. Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire paid $4 billion
in 2006 for an 80 percent stake in Iscar, which has about 11,000
employees worldwide.

At least 73 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip toward
Israel yesterday, raising the total since Nov. 14 to about 900,
according to the Israel Defense Forces. Air-raid sirens sounded
twice in Tel Aviv as four rockets were intercepted by Israel’s
Iron Dome missile-defense system. A rocket was fired at
Jerusalem on Nov. 16, the first such attack in decades. Some
14,000 have been fired from the territory in the past 11 years.

At the same time, a civil war in Syria threatened to spill
over Israel’s northern border. Last week, a mortar shell from
Syria drew a retaliatory strike from the Israeli army.

Buffett, Berkshire’s 82-year-old chairman and chief
executive officer, has praised Wertheimer and Iscar managers
Jacob Harpaz and Danny Goldman in his annual letters since
acquiring the firm. The toolmaker continued to report profit and
make acquisitions while its rivals lost money in 2009, Buffett
wrote in a letter the following year to Berkshire shareholders.